Bach Xuan Nguyen, the 60-year-old Harbor City man who jumped off a 12-story retirement home in Harbor City yesterday, is now the main suspect in the murders of his wife and daughter. The two women were found and declared dead from blunt force trauma just an hour-and-a-half before Nguyen's suicide was reported five miles south of the family's Petroleum Avenue residence.

When the unidentified relative opened the letter at 9 a.m., he discovered that Nguyen had killed Bich and Lisa, and was intending to kill himself as well.Twenty-seven-year-old Lisa was home temporarily for a two-week vacation.

"The relative drove to the Nguyens' house to check on the family and found the body of one of the victims inside the residence," LAPD Officer Karen Rayner told City News Service. The relative immediately called police.

According to KTLA, a SWAT team then surrounded the entire Harbor City neighborhood, suspecting Nguyen might still be armed inside the house. However, detectives soon got word of a suicide in San Pedro. KTLA reports:

After receiving information that the two cases were connected, detectives went to a retirement community in a 12-story building on the corner of 3rd and Mesa streets in San Pedro.

Security officers in the building told investigators that the man entered the building by following someone through the security door.

According to detectives, Nguyen took an elevator to the top of the tower. He removed his shirt and placed his keys on top of it before plunging toward the concrete below.

Officer Rayner said a coroner's autopsy has yet to be completed, but that blunt force trauma, or asphyxiation, appeared to be the cause of the women's deaths. One body was found in the bedroom, and the other in the bathroom.

CBS Los Angeles talked to some of Nguyen's neighbors; they indicated the middle-aged man had been diagnosed with terminal cancer -- he just went to the doctor last Monday -- and had recently been trying to sell his house.

"The way it looked, [he felt] like nobody was going to [be able to] take care of his family," said one neighbor.

Nguyen was familiar with the retirement home because it was one of his clients as a pharmaceutical salesman.

The full CBS report:

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